The scream started high and rose higher, thin, shrill, piercing.
Eleanor bolted to her feet and stared at the blank wall.
The scream broke off. “Non, non, non, non, non . . .” Over and over again, the noises, the scrape and the shuffle and a dull thump and another scream, sobbing, racking, laced with agony.
As she heard the high piteous screams of agony, Eleanor sank to her knees on the cold linoleum floor and buried her face against her legs and wrapped her arms around her head and rocked back and forth. Oh God, she couldn’t bear to hear it, not any longer. Please, God, make them stop it, make them stop!
Linda hurried, her face red with exertion as she struggled for breath against icy wind. It got colder every day. Never had the three blocks from the Metro to the Masson apartment seemed so long. She would put on another sweater before she started back. She came around the corner. Only a half block more. Eleanor would be surprised to see her. But Franz had to have a pair of gloves. How had they overlooked them? It was hard to remember everything and there had been so much to do, getting the right kind of papers for Franz. That posed a problem but Father Laurent, as always, had a friend.
The wind wasn’t quite so bad after she made the turn so she walked a little faster. The sooner she picked up the gloves, the sooner she could get it back to the Latin Quarter apartment. Jonathan had still been asleep when she left. She had paused and looked down at him. He slept on his back, his arms flung wide. She wanted, so terribly, to touch him, just to touch him. But Robert had been behind her, ready to leave for school, so she only looked. She hoped he was still asleep, perhaps in a dream of a canoe gliding over still green water. He needed sleep, he and the soldiers and Franz. They needed all the rest they could get today. She looked down at her watch. Seven-thirty. In less than ten hours, they would leave.
Tomorrow, Jonathan wouldn’t be there. But it wouldn’t be too long before she could leave. December 13. Less than a month now. She was going to try to go to England. She and Jonathan had planned it. She hadn’t told Eleanor yet. But she must guess. Perhaps she would tell Eleanor this morning. No, it would take longer and she wanted to hurry.
Linda looked up. No light in the front room, at least the shades had no glow this dark and gray . . .
Linda stumbled, almost stopped.
Lighter. The second shade was lighter. The second shade!
The sidewalk stretched away empty. A man slammed a door a few feet from her and walked briskly out into the cold. Nothing else moved the length of the street, the iron spike fence dark and gray, the uneven pavement dark and gray.
Linda started up uncertainly. The second shade was light, the signal they had planned. Only Eleanor had been home. Eleanor wouldn’t have pulled the lighter shade down by mistake. But anyone can make a mistake. Linda fearfully looked up and down both sides of the street as she continued to walk forward.
A man stood up at the top of the stairs of the building across the street, shielding himself from the wind and the cold in the entryway to the building.
The man stood, made no move to go down the steps.
Linda walked on. Her legs felt leaden and old. Her heart thudded with a sickening unevenness. I’m going to faint, Linda thought, with horror, I’m going to fall down and then they’ll know. Somehow she kept on walking, not looking at the Masson apartment house as she passed, not looking again across the street. Shrinking within her coat, her shoulders drawn tight, her head ducked forward, she waited to hear a shouted command to stop. The street seemed so long now. How far to the end of the block, then she would turn to right. Thirty feet, twenty, fifteen. Had the man waiting in the entryway seen her look up toward the Masson apartment, seen her stumble and almost stop?
Ten feet, five. She plunged around the corner, then, still fearful, walked faster and faster but didn’t dare to run. One block. Two. Three. No one paid attention to her. The streets were beginning to be populated now as people started to work, pedestrians, occasional bicycles, a few rattly cars running on charcoal. A small café on the next corner was opening for business. There would be a telephone.
She ordered coffee and a brioche and asked to use the telephone. As she dialed the number, her hands began to shake. In a moment, Eleanor would answer and it would all turn out to be a mistake and they would laugh about it, how Linda had crept by the apartment house and walked so fast to get away..
“Allo. Allo.”
Linda closed her eyes. My sister. Oh, Eleanor, my sister.
“Allo. Allo. Who is calling?”
Linda pressed down the cradle bar, cutting off that harshly accented stranger’s voice. Blindly, she turned away from the telephone, moved toward the door, not even hearing the proprietor’s voice. “Mademoiselle, don’t you want your coffee and sweet roll?”
She stopped on the sidewalk. Father Laurent, she must tell him. Perhaps he could do something. Robert. Oh my God, how was she going to tell Robert? Robert! What if the Gestapo was looking for him? They would come for him. They would be searching for Robert and for her. If they asked the neighbors most of them wouldn’t know anything about them, some who did would pretend ignorance, but the Biziens knew where Robert went to school.
Linda walked faster and faster. When had Eleanor been picked up? Was it this morning? Was a Gestapo car even now going toward Robert’s school? Or was the car already there?
Linda ran the seven blocks to his school. The school was around the corner from St. Ferdinand’s. Her chest ached, her legs hurt. She hadn’t run this far in years. She slowed just before she reached the block and cautiously approached the intersection. The street looked normal, no cars, three pedestrians. She slipped unobtrusively into an alleyway that bordered the east side of the school and entered through the kitchen. A lay sister looked up from a mound of potatoes and smiled “Bonjour, Mademoiselle.”
“Bonjour.” Linda walked down a narrow dark hall to the central stairs. Robert’s classroom was on the next floor, three doors to the left. The classroom door was ajar and she heard the soft murmur of Latin declensions. Linda edged up to the door and looked down the rows. Oh dear God, what if he had disobeyed and gone home and not to school as he had promised? What if the Gestapo has already come and taken Robert away?
Robert stood at the blackboard, his back to her. He was reaching up, straining to reach the very top of the marking space. He looked so young and so vulnerable.
The teacher looked up and saw Linda. She spoke quietly to the class then rose and moved toward the door. She stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. “We have met before, I believe. I am Sister Marie Angelique.
“I am Robert Masson’s aunt, Linda Rossiter.”
“Something is wrong?”
Linda nodded heavily. “My sister . . . Robert’s mother . . . the Gestapo . . .”
“Oh, my dear. Wait here. I will get him.”
In a moment, she and Robert stepped into the hall. “What is it, Sister?”
“This way, Robert. Come, we will go down to my office. Your aunt and I must talk.”
He saw her. “Aunt Linda, what’s happened?”
“Robert.” The words hurt her throat and her voice sounded strange. “Robert, I went to get the gloves. When I looked up, the second shade was light.”
“Mother,” he whispered. “Have they arrested Mother?”
She couldn’t answer.
His face whitened and his eyes looked suddenly enormous. He turned away from them, moved unsteadily down the hall, stopped. He turned back, stared at Linda in despair.
“Robert, my dear, we will hide you. And you, too, Mlle. Rossiter. We know a way.”
“Oh thank you, sister, but we too know a way. But we must hurry. Someone might tell the Gestapo where Robert goes to school.”
“Aunt Linda.” His voice was strained but steady. “Have you thought, if they’ve arrested Mother, they may know about the other apartment. Everyone there may have been caught.”
Her heart twisted. Jonathan. She had left h
im sleeping, his fair hair tousled, his arms out flung. And Franz and the four soldiers.
“Robert, you go to Father Laurent. Be careful going in the church. If he is there, if they haven’t caught him, he will know what to do. I will go to the apartment and bring Jonathan and the others to the Church now—if they are there. We won’t wait until evening.”
Eleanor woke with a stiff neck and aching head. She stared uncomprehendingly around the stark room with its tan walls and boarded-over window and glaringly bright light. She remembered when she saw the claw footed bathtub. She half lay, half-sat in the corner of the room farthest from the door. The night had passed. The screaming had, finally, terribly, stopped. An occasional heavy boot had sounded in the hall way. Once there was a clatter and the low rumble of several voices. Toward morning she smelled coffee and the thick sweet scent of frying ham. It was the smell of food that brought her fully awake.
Clumsily, she began to get up. When she stood, she leaned against the wall. She was so hungry and thirsty. Water. She moved unsteadily toward the bath tub. When she leaned over it, she once again saw the rusty dried stains down the side and across the bottom. But she must have water.
She turned the tap on cautiously and let a little trickle of water spill down. She splashed water into her face and then, filling her hands, began to drink, quickly, thirstily. Her purse sat next to the straight chair. It seemed odd to see her purse here. It was a beautiful purse, fine grained leather from Spain. Andre had given it to her last Christmas. She walked across the room and picked it up. It gave her a sense of orderliness to comb her hair, apply lipstick, a bright dark red, and a fine dusting of powder. Then she sat on the straight chair, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.
She hadn’t been gone an hour. Not even an hour. Linda ran the last block, not caring that early morning pedestrians watched her curiously. She dashed around the last corner. No cars. Not a car in sight. No huge black German car. No Army trucks. Just a bicycle padlocked to the fence across the street. Oh God, thank you, God, thank you. They are all right. I’m sure they are all right.
She clattered up the stairs and burst into the apartment.
Jonathan hurried out of the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”
“Eleanor’s been arrested.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Either last night or this morning. The lighter shade was pulled down in the second window. Eleanor said we should pull it down if the Gestapo came. I went to a café and telephoned the apartment and a man answered.
He gripped her arm. “What about Robert? We have to get him.”
“I did, Jonathan. I went to his school. I’ve sent him to Father Laurent and told him to say we would all be coming now.”
Jonathan talked fast. “I’ll get the men. You see to Franz.” Before he moved away, he reached out and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Linda.”
Major Krause didn’t look up as Eleanor was brought in. His head was bent as he read.
The guard nodded at the chair sitting in front of the desk.
Eleanor sat down, and unobtrusively, looked about the office. An elegant office. A Persian rug with tones of ice blue and shadow gray on the floor, dark heavy velvet curtains, an ornate ceiling and sitting behind the desk a man wearing the black of an SS officer.
No one had hurt her yet. That gave her a little courage. She had tried hard to keep her face unmoved when the door finally opened this morning. It must be mid-morning now. She looked to her left at the Dresden clock on the carved mantelpiece. Ten-forty-five. She had waited hours for someone to come, dreading for the door to open, yet welcoming the break in the fearfulness of anticipating horror.
A single soldier had entered and ordered her to come. Now again she waited.
But they hadn’t hurt her yet.
What was she going to do if they did to her whatever hideous thing they had done to the man who had been in the room next to her last night? Her hands tightened on each other. Don’t think, Eleanor, don’t think. Just say you don’t know anything at all about anything and maybe they would believe her.
He was writing now, his pale hand moving the pen sharply across the paper. He paused, made a final brief note, laid down the pen, and looked up.
She knew him at once. It was the same officer who had come to the apartment in August after Linda had brought Michael.
He stared at her, his green eyes, a peculiarly piercing green, bored into hers. “You would have been advised, Mme. Masson, to have turned over Lt. Evans last August. We would have forgiven one mistake. But, as it is now, you are guilty of many crimes.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“It won’t do any good for you to deny it, Madame. It will only make things harder for you. We have all the evidence, you see. We know that you have been hiding soldiers in your apartment,” his eyes never left her face, “that you are part of a conspiracy to spirit English soldiers out of France.”
Eleanor was tired, so tired. How long had it been since she had really slept? And she had not eaten since supper the night before and that was only a cold potato and a glass of wine, but she heard that one telling phrase so clearly, your apartment. Your apartment and he meant the Masson apartment. He didn’t know anything at all, he really didn’t. And Germans responded only to strength.
She began to shake her head. “Major, this is all some great misunderstanding. I know nothing of any such activities, and I can’t imagine why I have been brought here.” She pulled herself up straighter, lifted her head. “I really must demand some kind of information on the charges against me. After all, I am an American citizen. I want the American Embassy informed that you are holding me. I also wish to call a lawyer.”
His thin mouth spread in a smile. “You forget where you are, Madame.”
“I certainly know where I am.”
“And where is that?”
She stared at him coldly. “In offices,” she looked around, “that used to belong to France but have been taken over by the Germans.”
His face flushed. “Not just Germans, Madame. You are in the offices of the Geheime Staats Polizei and we do not permit lawyers to interfere with our investigations or foreign embassies or anyone. Here, Madame, you are in our power until we choose to release you or condemn you. So you should make an effort to cooperate.”
“I am making every effort, Major. But it is difficult to show one’s innocence when one is ignorant of the charge.”
“The charge? Conspiracy, Madame, to flout the law by helping fugitive soldiers escape. We know you are a part of a ring. We know you have received huge sums of money. Twenty-five thousand francs yesterday. Who gave you that money, Madame?”
Eleanor looked at him blankly. Money. Mme. Leclerc wouldn’t betray Eleanor, it just wasn’t possible. But Madame didn’t know about the Latin Quarter apartment. She might well think Eleanor had hidden soldiers in the Masson apartment. But Mme. Leclerc wouldn’t betray her.
Jules face flashed in her mind. He had tried to keep Eleanor from seeing Mme. Leclerc. Could he be the one who had betrayed her? If it was Jules, he didn’t know anything about them. If it was Jules, the others were safe, Robert and Linda and Jonathan and Father Laurent. Safe, all of them.
Eleanor relaxed in her chair and smiled at Maj. Krause. “No one has given me money, Major. No one.”
He sensed the change in her. The woman wasn’t afraid. All of a sudden, when she realized of what she had been accused, she wasn’t afraid. He frowned and looked back down at his sheet of paper. An anonymous tip. She had been arrested just before midnight and brought here and kept in a third floor cell. Sgt. Friedland has searched her apartment and found nothing incriminating. The neighbors had professed ignorance as to her activities, though, one, a Mme. Bizien had volunteered that there was certainly something funny going on with those people because they were in and out, in and out, all the time. Krause’s frown deepened. There were certain ways that would, ultimately, make most people talk. But she was an Am
erican citizen.
Abruptly, he picked up the telephone and dialed the number of the Masson apartment. “Sergeant? Maj. Krause here. You have found nothing?” He listened, nodded heavily. “Search again, sergeant. Search everything.” He hung up and studied Eleanor again. An attractive woman, though too thin. Curly dark hair. Large brown eyes. And she didn’t look frightened.
“All right, Madame. Tell me what you did yesterday. Start with your breakfast. I want everything you did, everywhere you went.”
They went over it and over it and over it. His face wavered in front of Eleanor’s eyes and her tongue seemed too thick to talk. Over and over and over again, until her voice was a dull monotone, “ . . . took the car to the hospital. I spoke to Sister Marie Therese and visited the wards on floors three and four . . .”
“Madame!”
Eleanor’s head snapped up.
“Earlier you said floors two and three. Which is correct?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Floors three and four or floors two and three,” he shouted.
“Three and four,” she said slowly.
Was it there that she had received the money? He wondered. Or was the whole tip a lie? Did she have an enemy? There had been no 25,000 francs hidden in her apartment. Perhaps it was all a mistake.
His telephone rang. “Ah yes, Sgt. Friedland.” Krause listened, then, slowly, cruelly, he began to smile.
Instinctively, she drew back in her chair.
“You have accepted no money, Madame?”
She shook her head.
He slammed his hand down so hard on his desktop that a coffee cup rattled in its saucer and fell sideways. “Then Madame, how do you explain the 25,000 francs hidden in the bag of potatoes?”
Father Laurent’s wavering candle threw a misshapen shadow of his billowing cassock ahead of him. Linda saw the shadow against the bricked tunnel wall, beyond the dim radiance of the kerosene lamp. She struggled to get up. “Father Laurent?”
Escape From Paris Page 24
